[Congressional Record Volume 150, Number 115 (Wednesday, September 22, 2004)]
[House]
[Pages H7418-H7425]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                  NEW PARTNERSHIP FOR AMERICA'S FUTURE

  The SPEAKER pro tempore (Mr. Bishop of Utah). Under the Speaker's 
announced policy of January 7, 2003, the gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. 
Pallone) is recognized for 60 minutes as the designee of the minority 
leader.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, earlier today a united Democratic Caucus 
went to the steps of the U.S. Capitol right outside these doors and 
unveiled our New Partnership for America's Future. This partnership 
reaffirms House Democrats' commitment to six core values and serves as 
a road map of the priorities we would focus on if the American people 
voted for a Democratic majority in November.
  The announcement of this new partnership was necessary today because 
a large majority of Americans have lost faith in Congress. Over the 
past decade, Republicans have controlled the people's House and have 
often strayed from these core American values. My Democratic colleagues 
and I have been fighting for these causes for many years, but this is 
the first time that we have unveiled a partnership with the American 
people, a promise, if you will, that if the American people put their 
trust in us and elect a Democratic majority this November, we will work 
with them as partners to make their lives and our government better.
  Mr. Speaker, the House Democrats are united, focused, and totally 
committed to taking the bold steps needed to strengthen the middle 
class that is the heart of our democracy. It reaffirms the commitment 
of House Democrats to six core values: one is prosperity, two is 
national security, three is fairness, four is opportunity, five is 
community, and six is accountability.
  Mr. Speaker, our New Partnership for America's Future begins with our 
commitment to promoting prosperity for every American, and this poster 
which I have which I am going to go through essentially outlines each 
of the six values that are part of the Democrats' New Partnership for 
America's Future.
  The first one, prosperity, says ``providing all Americans with the 
opportunity to succeed and to live a secure and comfortable life, 
including good jobs here at home, affordable health care, a growing 
economy with stable prices, investment in new technologies, and fiscal 
responsibility in government.''
  Mr. Speaker, in my home State of New Jersey, over 71,000 
manufacturing jobs have been lost over the last 4 years, and more than 
214,000 New Jerseyans are still looking for work. Yet House Republicans 
have missed every opportunity to jump-start our economy. Instead, House 
Republicans and President Bush continue to insist that our economy has 
turned the corner. Today, families are being squeezed by falling 
incomes and rising costs. The typical family's income has fallen more 
than $1,500 under George Bush and congressional Republicans, and the 
jobs that the Bush economy is creating are paying low wages, $9,000 
less than the old jobs that they have replaced.
  House Democrats would promote prosperity by creating new jobs, 
enacting middle-class tax relief, and rewarding companies that create 
jobs here at home. If Democrats control the House, we promise the 
American people that we will create 10 million new jobs over the next 4 
years. Democrats want to reform the Tax Code to reward companies for 
creating secure jobs for Americans here in the United States. And 
Democrats want to assure access to capital for small businesses to 
create jobs and serve new markets. We also want to support fair wages 
with good benefits so no one goes to work every day and comes home poor 
and dependent on public services.
  And, Mr. Speaker, the second value that House Democrats promise to 
focus on is our Nation's national security. And again I have the poster 
here that I would like to put up, Mr. Speaker, on the national security 
issue. And as we can see, it says, ``Guaranteeing military strength 
second to none, stopping the spread of weapons of mass destruction, 
building strong diplomatic alliances to protect America's national 
interests, and collecting timely and reliable intelligence to keep us 
safe at home by preventing terrorist attacks before they occur.''
  Mr. Speaker, all Americans are proud of the more than 138,000 brave 
men and women who are serving their country in either Afghanistan or 
Iraq. But President Bush and House Republicans sent them into a war in 
Iraq without providing them with the resources and equipment they need 
to complete their mission successfully and come home safe. Despite all 
the bad news out of Iraq in the last couple of months, it is clear 
President Bush has no strategy for success in Iraq.
  Over the past week, some of the Republican Party's most experienced 
Senators on national security issues, and I mention Senators McCain, 
Hagel, and Lugar, have come out and told the American people that 
things are not going well in Iraq. Yet President Bush and Republicans 
here in the House of Representatives continue with their same old happy 
talk about how the war is going according to President Bush's plans.
  The fact is the war in Iraq has made us less safe. The President has 
ignored more pressing dangers like the nuclear threats that have 
increased in Iran and North Korea. International terrorist cells expand 
on a daily basis, and we have divided our friends and united our 
enemies.
  Democrats strive to continue to build an American military second to 
none. Along with nations around the world who are committed to freedom 
and security, we also guarantee that all of our military forces will 
possess the most effective equipment available. We will also protect 
the homeland by making sure that every container and ship is secure 
before entering an American port, by inspecting all airline cargo, and 
by preventing the technology of weapons of mass destruction from 
falling into the hands of terrorists.
  Unlike House Republicans, we as Democrats also plan to honor every 
American veteran and their family by keeping our commitments to those 
who have served and sacrificed for our country. It is not fair that 
America's veterans put their lives on the line in battle only to return 
to the United States and realize the same government that sent them off 
to war now refuses to abide by its commitments.
  That brings me to my third value. I see some of my colleagues are 
here, though.

[[Page H7419]]

  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. PALLONE. I yield to the gentleman from Oregon.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, I want to at this point, since the 
gentleman is proposing a positive agenda for America, just to sort of 
put this discussion in context. If people are happy with the status 
quo, if they think the country is going in the right direction, if they 
believe that what has happened to our economy in terms of the job loss 
over the last 4 years, the outsourcing of American jobs, if they think 
that a pharmaceutical benefit based in subsidies to the pharmaceutical 
and insurance industries is the way to help seniors and other Americans 
afford prescription drugs, if they think that borrowing 600, $700 
billion a year, 10 percent of our accumulated national debt in 1 year, 
breaking the debt limit of the United States for the third time in one 
Presidency, if they look at those things and think that that is a good, 
sane direction for this country, then they might not be interested in 
this alternative.
  But the alternative that we are offering as Democrats today is 
something that, instead of benefiting that one tenth of 1 percent or 
maybe, to be generous, one half of 1 percent of the populace who are 
doing so well with these policies, then we are offering a different 
direction.
  We do not think the United States of America is on the right path 
with its fiscal policy, its trade policy, its tax policy, tax fairness, 
with its Medicare policy and health care policy, and a whole host of 
education policies, things that are important to Americans. So I want 
the gentleman to continue to describe a positive alternative because 
maybe a little later in the hour I will wax a little more eloquent 
about how bad things really are, from my perspective, the perspective 
of my district in Southwest Oregon, and I think many other districts 
around the country. But I just kind of wanted to put the context on 
this discussion.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. PALLONE. I yield to the gentleman from Ohio.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I just want to say, and I have tried 
to say this when we have come before the American public, that we are 
not making this up. I mean, I think it has gotten so bad and so much on 
the wrong track in this country that if they are just sitting at home 
watching a bunch of Democrats up there talking, they would think they 
cannot possibly be telling the truth. It cannot possibly be that bad.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Like a Dave Barry routine. Right?
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Exactly, Mr. Speaker. It is like a bad movie or a 
bad novel or we are demagoging the issues. But if the American people 
will take the time to not only listen to what our plan is but listen to 
our critique, which is, I think, is okay.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Factually based.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Factually based in the American discourse today, in 
2004, that they will find that these are facts. We are not making this 
up. The studies that come out, the two newspaper articles that come out 
that say the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development are 
cutting subsidies for poor people to live in the city of New York or in 
major cities or the banks have got their fingers in the student loans 
and they are making billions of dollars of money, we are not making 
this up. This is in newspapers every single day.
  So the gentleman from New Jersey, as he goes on here, I just want the 
American people, again, to put in a little bit of context here that we 
are not just making this up, that it sounds terrible and it sounds 
terrible because it is, because we have an administration and a 
Congress that consistently and constantly try to appeal to the lowest 
common denominator. They always appeal to where they can raise the most 
amount of money from that industry at the expense of average people who 
need help. And if we all want to move forward in the 21st century, the 
government needs to be involved. And I think that is what the New 
Partnership for America's Future stands for.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, will the gentleman yield?
  Mr. PALLONE. I yield to the gentleman from Oregon.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, because he raised a couple of provocative 
issues, I did a series of Medicare prescription drug forums in my 
district, and I will get to the point of what the gentleman mentioned, 
but what was most interesting is I saw well over a thousand seniors in 
my district.

                              {time}  2115

  A total of six had purchased the so-called prescription drug discount 
card. Two had not gotten them yet, even though they purchased them in 
June, and this was August. Two got them and said they were worthless. 
One said, well, it gave him about a 10 percent discount. And then one 
other guy said he was doing really great. But a bunch of the other 
people in the audience sort of shouted at him and said, no, he was a 
partisan guy. Whatever. Out of 1,000 people, that is it.
  But the point is, at one of those Medicare town halls an older woman 
came, worked until she was 70 years old, but all she has got, widowed, 
is her Social Security, and she is living in subsidized housing. They 
just raised, as the gentleman referenced about housing, they raised her 
share to the point where she came, and it was kind of sad, she came in 
a cab, which was pretty unusual, this town does not have a big cab 
service, it is a small city, Albany, Oregon. That was a little unusual. 
So I saw her and greeted her. I kind of helped her in.
  She said, ``This is only the second time I have been out in 3 months. 
I am really sick, and I am taking a lot of prescription drugs, and it 
is a big burden on me. Medicare does not cover them. I looked at 
prescription drug cards; it is not going to help.'' She had just gotten 
notice that her share, she was going to have to pay about $70 more a 
month for her apartment.
  She said, ``You know, I cannot afford that. I do not have the money 
now.'' She said, ``I am basically eating into my savings and I don't 
have much savings left.'' It was just incredibly sad to see that.
  So she is getting hit on both sides. She is getting hit by a phony 
prescription drug benefit, which is costing more than half a trillion 
dollars to the taxpayers in the United States that totally subsidizes 
the pharmaceutical and insurance industries, but delivers scant 
benefits to a person like her.
  Yes, there are some people who benefit from it, people who are, 
incredibly, even poorer than she is and have very large drug costs. But 
very few people will get a net benefit out of it. And then to sock her, 
this is where we have got to raise money so we can give trickle-down 
tax cuts to the wealthy, is from women like her, who worked her entire 
life?
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. If the gentleman will yield further, that is the 
issue. It is the fact that over the course of the last 2 years this 
Congress and this President have said we need to give trillions of 
dollars back to people who make more than $1 million a year. We just 
cannot give it away.
  The downside is, we are taking it away from somewhere. It almost is a 
zero-sum game. We are taking it away from that senior citizen in your 
district and thousands of others, probably millions of others across 
the country, who are going to suffer because of that.
  So ask yourself, as a voter in the United States of America, do you 
want the governmental policy of your government to be, we are going to 
give tax cuts to people, $100,000 or $130,000, back to someone who 
makes $1 million a year or more? Or are we going to have them pay their 
fair share of taxes, they are obviously doing well, they are making $1 
million a year, and use that money to make sure that people in your 
community or people in my community or people in the city of New York 
or any major city have affordable housing?
  Unfortunately, we have an administration and a Congress here, they do 
not understand that $70 a month means a lot to some people. $100 a 
month means a lot to people. We are lucky. We get paid okay. We are 
never going to be in that position, thank God. But there are thousands 
and millions of people in this country that that affects their lives. 
They end up going to the food bank because they do not have $70 a month 
or $100 a month.
  When is this Congress and this President going to begin to understand 
there are American people that need their help? And they turn their 
back,

[[Page H7420]]

and they come to our communities and say, hey, the economy is doing 
great. It is doing great. So maybe someone can get a job in this great 
economy and pay for their grandmother's prescription drug, or that 
extra $70. They are just so out of touch, they are in fantasyland.
  I just want to say, yes, there is a cost. The money comes from very, 
very wealthy people who have been given a break and have had a free 
ride over the last few years at the expense of those people. It is not 
for free.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. If the gentleman will yield further, this is something a 
lot people do not realize. It is one thing to have a debate about 
whether we should cut taxes, pay down the debt or maybe spend more on 
education for our kids and other programs when we had a surplus. But 
this President has taken us from record surplus to record deficit in 4 
short years.
  So we are borrowing the money to finance tax cuts. We are borrowing 
every penny of the Social Security surplus this year. $160 billion more 
will be paid in out of taxes that fall only on wage- and salary-earning 
Americans who earn less than $90,000 a year.
  We are giving the money they paid in for their retirement, this 
Congress is going to borrow it and give it substantially to those 
people you are talking about in much greater amounts. It will flow to 
the people who earn over $1 million a year. And guess what? They do not 
even pay the tax. If they are a investor, they do not pay a penny into 
Social Security. It is only people who work for wages and salary.
  So we are going to borrow all that money, and we are going to borrow 
another $440 billion. We are going to indebt our kids and grandkids for 
the next 30 years to borrow $600 billion to run the government this 
year. Every program of the government except for the Defense 
Department, and almost half of that, is being run on borrowed money. We 
are borrowing from our future. So we are borrowing that money to invest 
in trickle-down tax cuts.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. And who are we borrowing it from? We are borrowing 
it from banks in Japan and banks in China.
  So here we have China cleaning our clock in the manufacturing sector 
in the United States of America, stealing all our jobs, not paying 
their workers anything, no environmental regulations, no human rights, 
no religious freedom, all the things that this Chamber and this Capitol 
and this Congress hold dear, that we get a lot of speeches about now, 
in election time, is going to China, and we are borrowing money from 
them.
  We are paying them interest on the money that we are borrowing from 
them. They take the interest and they invest it back into their state-
run manufacturing businesses and steal the jobs in the United States of 
America. What a deal for China.
  And we do not have anything. We are losing on every end, which is 
mortgaging the future of our kids and our grandkids. We are losing our 
manufacturing, we are losing good paying jobs. The jobs that are 
replacing the jobs we have now are $7,000 or $8,000 less than the jobs 
we have that we are losing. And China, which is going to be the 
greatest economic competitor to the United States of America, is 
winning.
  American people, we are losing. We are making bad decisions every 
single day in this Chamber. This President is making bad decisions. And 
the kicker, the kicker, is this: that we want to deal with North Korea. 
This gets into the war and everything else.
  We want to deal with North Korea. But we cannot deal with North 
Korea. And we want to deal and play tough with China with their 40 
percent currency manipulation, to try to put our business at a little 
more of an advantage in the international marketplace.
  But we cannot, because we are bogged down in a war. So instead of 
talking tough with China, we have to go to China and say, hey, China, 
can you help us with North Korea, because we just have too much 
political capital and money and soldiers and everything invested in the 
Middle East.
  So instead of confronting China, we are in a position of weakness, 
and we have to ask China to help us with North Korea. What a bad 
position this administration has put us in.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. If the gentleman will yield further, this is an 
excellent point. I do want to get back to the positive agenda, but we 
are talking about things that people need to think about.
  The control that we are giving to the Chinese and the Japanese over 
our economy, basically 40 percent of the $600 billion trade deficit we 
are going to run this year, we are borrowing from China and Japan. They 
are going to get unbelievable leverage over the future of the dollar 
and the future of the U.S. economy.
  And not only that. Of course, they are stealing our technology, and 
many American companies are aiding and abetting them in that theft of 
technology, because they want to access the cheap labor and the lack of 
environmental constraints and other things to move their companies and 
operate in China.
  The Republicans wanted to make a big deal about this satellite launch 
during the Clinton administration. Boy, that is like quaint history at 
this point, given the technology transfers and the theft going on 
today.
  You know, the Bush administration has filed one trade complaint. They 
told us, oh, we will give China, the bloody butchers of Beijing, 
Castro, he is bad, we cannot even sell him medicine, but the bloody 
butchers of Beijing that ran over the kids with the tanks and the 
democracy demonstrators and all that, we are going to give to these 
people permanent most-favored-nation status.
  We are going to pretend they are not a Communist country. We are 
going to do away with the laws of the United States that say, you do 
not extend that to Communist countries, Communist dictatorships. But 
they did with the rationale, oh, put them in the WTO, the World Trade 
Organization, then they will have to follow the rules.
  Well, the Bush administration, despite the document theft I have 
talked about time and time again, I have a couple of companies in my 
district that have been cloned in China, a small entrepreneur, a small 
business that the other side of the aisle cares so much about, except 
when it comes to, well, if the Chinese are stealing your stuff, tough 
luck.
  But they have filed one trade complaint against China, and it was 
with the pricing of drugs for the Pfizer Corporation. That is the only 
trade complaint filed against China. China, who is stealing the entire 
product of a small company, a beautiful American dream company in my 
district called Videx. A furniture manufacturing company in my district 
that refused to sell out to the Chinese, they cloned his entire line. 
Both these people have gotten calls from all over the United States 
saying, that happened to us too.
  These are the people that care about small business? They do not care 
about small business. They pretend to care about small business. They 
care about the mega-corporations that want to relocate to China and 
access the cheap labor, and they are playing right into the hands of 
the Chinese, who are an ongoing threat to the United States of America 
and will be the major threat in this century.

  But we are getting a little off track. This is pretty depressing. 
When I go to my chambers of commerce and I go around my district and I 
talk about this, people get a little depressed. I think if we talk a 
little more about the positive agenda, then we will get back to some of 
the problems.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I think it is exciting what we have to talk about 
here. I think we have outlined pretty much what the problems are and 
the problems we face. The beautiful thing about this system is, it is 
self-correcting. We have elections every 2 years. So the American 
people will now have a choice, and the choice to elect, hopefully, in 
this instance, a Democratic Chamber that has an agenda. I think that is 
going to be great for the future of the country.
  I yield back to the gentleman from New Jersey to explain what our 
agenda is.
  Mr. PALLONE. Reclaiming my time, first let me say the next point we 
have on our agenda, which is fairness, actually encompasses a lot of 
the things you mentioned in the last 10 or 15 minutes or so. So I think 
it is very much on point.
  The point of fairness, and we have the poster up here, basically says 
ensuring equal opportunity for all, including affordable health care 
for everyone, spending Social Security funds

[[Page H7421]]

only on Social Security, and eliminating tax loopholes so that all 
Americans pay their fair share.
  I think the point is, the American people are not looking for special 
treatment. What they really want is fair treatment. Yet for the past 
decade, the House Republican majority has focused on the needs of the 
wealthiest Americans to the detriment of our Nation's middle class.
  Over the past 4 years, household income has dropped by more than 
$1,500. Instead of helping middle-class families, Republicans forced 
through a tax cut that provided the wealthiest 1 percent of families 
with a tax cut worth almost $100,000 over 4 years.
  How can congressional Republicans say that is fair? You all talked 
before about the Republican tax cuts and who they went to.
  Democrats are saying that we would enact tax relief that is fair to 
the middle class, make health care affordable for every American, and 
provide tax incentives to assist employers in offering affordable 
health insurance to all employees.
  The preferential treatment Republicans have shown our wealthiest 
Americans also unfairly affects our Nation's seniors and the millions 
of baby-boomers that are closing in on the golden years. Four years 
ago, thanks to the fiscal policies of President Clinton, both Social 
Security and Medicare were solvent.
  When Republicans finally grabbed control of the White House and 
Congress 4 years ago in 2001, they promised to extend the solvency of 
Social Security and Medicare. But as we know, instead, the Republicans 
have spent the entire Social Security surplus. Much of this money has 
gone to tax breaks for the wealthiest Americans and also caused the 
large deficit that you mentioned.
  If you think of it, Republican policies call for spending the entire 
Social Security trust fund surplus every year for the next 10 years and 
beyond. So that is where you get into your deficit.
  Republicans also were not thinking of fairness when they passed this 
giant $500 billion Medicare bill last year that provides huge payoffs 
to HMOs and the pharmaceutical companies, again, the special interests. 
At the same time, this Congress provided a miniscule prescription drug 
benefit to our Nation's seniors that forces seniors to go outside of 
Medicare to get prescription drug assistance.
  Now we know what happened. We heard within the last few weeks about 
the Medicare premium is going up 17 percent, the largest increase we 
have had in the whole history of the Medicare program, and the majority 
of that is because of the Medicare prescription drug bill, or so-called 
prescription drug bill, which gives all of this money back to insurers, 
particularly the HMOs, and also to replenish the Medicare trust fund, 
which they borrowed from in order to pay for the tax cuts.

                              {time}  2130

  So Democrats are saying that we maintain an unqualified commitment to 
the preservation of retirement dignity through Medicare, Social 
Security and sound pensions. Unlike the Republican Medicare bill, 
Democrats guarantee a prescription drug benefit within the Medicare 
system. We would also allow access to lower-cost, reimported 
prescription drugs and permit the Secretary of Health and Human 
Services to negotiate on behalf of our Nation's 40 million seniors to 
substantially reduce the cost of prescription drugs.
  I know the gentleman has already commented on some of this, and I 
yield to the gentleman.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, let us just sort of go back to those two 
points, because they are very important to a large number of my 
constituents, Social Security and Medicare.
  This year, Social Security will over-tax individuals who work for 
wages and salary and the self-employed earning less than $89,000 a 
year. They will pay more in taxes than necessary to support the system, 
under the theory that that $160 billion we are going to extract only 
from wage- and salary-earning people who earn less than $90,000 a year, 
those who are not the big beneficiaries of the tax cuts, to put into a 
trust fund to pay for their retirement. That would be great.
  Unfortunately, this Congress is going to borrow every penny of that 
money, every penny, and replace it with IOUs. Some good part of it will 
go to pay for tax cuts, borrowing money to pay for tax cuts for people 
who do not pay Social Security taxes and do not ever care if they 
collect a cent because they are so wealthy; they may not even be 
eligible, because they may have never worked for salary and wages, who 
have been just investors their entire lives with their inheritance.
  Now, remember, we voted seven times; it was before this gentleman 
arrived, but I believe the gentleman from New Jersey was here. Seven 
times we voted on a lockbox for Social Security. The Republicans were 
berserk about that; Lockbox, lockbox, do not spend that Social Security 
money. Well, I voted for it every time. Guess what? George Bush became 
President, the lockbox is gone, broke open the door, grabbed the money 
and ran. And there is no more talk of the lockbox.
  So all of that money is being extracted only from people who work for 
wages and salary and is going to be borrowed and spent. Now, that is 
extraordinary. And how are we going to honor the IOUs with deficits as 
far as the eye can see proposed by this President and this majority? 
How are we going to repay those IOUs?
  Mr. PALLONE. Well, I have to tell the gentleman, he talks about the 
past on the floor of the House. And I remember when I was first elected 
back in 1988, and for those first few years, through the late 1980s, 
early 1990s, the policy or the theme of the Republicans here was to 
eliminate the deficit. They kept talking about how we needed to 
eliminate the deficit. There was a group that used to come on the 
floor, and I have said this before, but I will say it again, there was 
a group that used to come on the floor during Special Orders every 
night, just like we do, here we are, and they had a clock, a digital 
clock that was the whole length of this podium. And they would have the 
pages bring it out, and they could barely carry the thing. And every 
night they would say, this is how much higher the Federal deficit went. 
But, boy, we do not see anybody on the Republican side coming down here 
now talking about the deficit. It is the largest deficit we have ever 
had.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, if the gentleman will yield, I was in 
college actually at the time of the great Contract With America, of 
which one of the fundamental principles was that we were going to have 
this balanced budget amendment. And my God, I mean, when we look at 
where we are today, reckless, reckless leadership, Congress spending 
like drunken sailors.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. That is an insult, referring to drunken sailors.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I am sorry. That is true. I apologize to all of the 
sailors out there. But clearly, there is no concern for these budget 
deficits that we are running, putting our country in a position of 
weakness with some of our foreign competitors.
  So I think it is important that the American people just at least see 
the duplicity of some of the comments that we are getting here today, a 
party that was clearly for fiscal responsibility.
  I have to be honest with my colleagues. When I go back home, and I 
live in a pretty strong Democratic area in northeast Ohio, I am running 
into more and more Republicans that are very, very frustrated with the 
behavior of the Congress and the President running these deficits, 
because they have always been fiscally conservative. That has been a 
cornerstone of the Republican Party for many years, and now, they are 
looking and saying, wait a minute. And here we are as Democrats trying 
to put in the PAYGO provisions, that if you provide tax cuts or any 
kind of spending increases, you have to pay for them. And I think we 
have evolved as a Congress over the last 10 or 15 years, and we 
recognize how dangerous these deficits are. But a Republican House, a 
Republican Senate, a Republican President, $600 billion deficit, 
unending war in Iraq, borrowing from Social Security, borrowing from 
the banks in China; very, very dangerous proposition.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, we will move on to the second point the 
gentleman made about Medicare, and I think that that is an 
extraordinary point the gentleman made, the largest one-year premium 
increase in history, far exceeding any senior's Social Security cost-
of-living adjustment. A funny thing, when they calculate cost of 
living, they do not include health care

[[Page H7422]]

costs, pharmaceutical costs, it seems. They tell seniors, oh, well, 
your cost of living is going up 2.4, 2.6 percent. So to a senior, 
except perhaps wealthy seniors who own their own home; I mean there are 
very few people who can say, gee, my cost of living is only going up 
2.4 percent a year.
  The point is that with the Medicare bill that we passed, the White 
House hid how much it costs. I mean, there is now a former employee who 
has now become a very highly paid lobbyist, very common with this 
administration; highly paid lobbyists, go work in the administration 
and then become highly paid lobbyists again. This guy was head of the 
Health Care Financing Administration. He told a career employee who was 
asked by Congress, how much will this bill cost, an actuary, and he 
figured it out. And he was told, the career employee was told by the 
political appointee, who is now a million-dollar-a-year lobbyist 
rewarded by the pharmaceutical and insurance industry, if you tell 
Congress how much this will really cost, I will fire you.
  Well, here is a guy who works for a living, has a family, career 
civil servant, and he was a little bit scared for his job, so he did 
not tell Congress how much it would really cost. He wrote it down, 
transmitted it to his boss, but he did not go to the press. He did not 
want to lose his job.
  Well, now, the Bush appointee has moved on to his million-dollar 
lobbying job, a little reward that he got from the pharmaceutical 
industry for having lied to Congress, and we find out that it is going 
to cost more like half a trillion dollars, maybe six-tenths of a 
trillion dollars, and most seniors are going to get more cost than 
benefit. Some seniors will actually pay more, those who have less than 
$1,000 a year in drug costs will actually pay more under this plan. And 
seniors in the doughnut hole, well, they get the doughnut hole; we know 
what that is. And then, some people who have over $4,000, $5,000 a year 
drug costs, they will get some benefit. But that is their vision. And 
they prohibited Americans from reimporting less expensive, FDA-approved 
drugs from Canada, and they outlawed Medicare bargaining for less 
expensive drug costs for all Medicare recipients.

  We could have had a program for nothing, not one taxpayer cent, just 
like we do with the VA. Everybody in Medicare has a card. Medicare goes 
out and bargains lower prescription drug costs. Just like I get in Blue 
Cross Blue Shield as a Federal employee, they negotiate discounts of 
60, 70 percent. We could have provided a more meaningful benefit for no 
money, but guess what? It would not have made the pharmaceutical and 
insurance industries a huge pile of money. And they were against it and 
the White House nixed it, and that is now the policy of the United 
States of America. And there is only one way we can change that, and 
that is to change the presidency and to change the direction of this 
Congress, the House and the Senate. And then we can roll it back, and 
we can give a meaningful benefit at much less cost.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I would like to move to the next point, 
because I know it particularly relates to the 30-plus group. Our 
colleague, the gentleman from Ohio (Mr. Ryan), has been basically out 
front on the issue about how we need to address the concerns of the 
younger generation. And this one, of course, is the value that talks 
about opportunity, providing Americans access to the tools to succeed 
as they choose, vibrant public education system accountable to the 
highest standards for every school and a chance for all children to 
reach their potential, including an affordable and accessible college 
education.
  Now, since the Republicans have failed to provide promised funding 
for education reforms, millions of Americans have gone without help in 
reading and math and without after-school programs that boost academic 
achievement and keep kids safe. Republicans have underfunded education 
programs by $27 billion over the past 4 years nationwide. And of 
course, the President, as we know, several years ago heralded the No 
Child Left Behind program but never funded it. And unlike Republicans, 
Democrats would provide opportunity through high-quality, early 
childhood education, vibrant and accountable public schools and an 
affordable college education.
  I have to say that the number-one issue, when I go back to my 
district, that people are concerned about is health care. That is the 
one I hear about the most. But the second, the one I hear about second 
is education, particularly the inability for families to finance their 
kids' higher education which, whether you are in public or private 
school, the costs keep coming up.
  I know that the gentleman from Ohio has talked about this many times 
in the evening when he talks about the 30-plus, so I will yield to the 
gentleman.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman bringing 
this up, because I think whether we are talking about trade with China 
or what we are going to do, I mean, I think everyone agrees in the 
country on investments in education, whether it is K through 12, 
actually funding No Child Left Behind, which would be a nice idea, or 
making sure that average citizens in the United States of America have 
access to our colleges and universities.
  I just want to share a couple of examples. Today, in one of the New 
York newspapers, they did an editorial. Basically, what is happening 
with the college students, and this just illustrates how egregious the 
infiltration of the money folks in this town can be, there is a 
provision in the Department of Education that guarantees banks a 9.5 
percent return interest for a loan that they make, 9.5 percent. Well, 
they are now currently lending out student loans at 3.5 percent, but 
the government is reimbursing them for 9.5 percent. So if we do not fix 
this, for example, in the next 6 months, there will be $3 billion 
wasted that will go right to the banks. I am not making this up. This 
is crazy. Mr. Speaker, $3 billion that will go to the banks.
  So, all we are saying on the Democratic side is that we believe that 
that $3 billion should be put into the Pell grants. We believe that 
that should be, maybe, used to actually lower the interest rates that 
average students would need to be paid so they would not have to pay 
and invest that money to increase access and opportunity for people.
  How are we going to compete with China and Japan and India and all of 
these countries that are stealing all of our jobs if we are not willing 
to actually fund the education programs in the United States of 
America? We need more people competing. We need more entrepreneurs. We 
need more scientists. We need more mathematicians. We need more 
engineers. We need more math and science teachers. We need more people 
wanting to be astronauts and move the country forward in the 21st 
century. But if we do not invest, we are not going to see the return on 
that money. But we would rather give the $3 billion to the banks. 
Again, I am not making this up.
  I do not have anything against banks. They own my house, and they own 
my car, so there is nothing personal here, but it is just as a policy 
decision, we need to spend that money in a different way, and it is the 
same thing with No Child Left Behind.
  In Ohio alone, all of the new mandates that the No Child Left Behind 
Act instituted for local school districts, Ohio alone in one year, are 
underfunded by $1.5 billion. Now, Ohio had a provision; 75 percent of 
the kids needed to graduate. No Child Left Behind came in and said, you 
need 100 percent, so we are going to have the tutorials, the after-
school programs, the summer programs, everything else; never sent the 
money. So, good idea, right? We want the next 25 across the finish line 
so that they can compete and create wealth and value in our society. 
Great idea. But if you do not fund the program, and you put it on the 
backs of the locals who do not want to vote for property tax levies as 
it is, where is the progress?
  So, again, we are saying that, if we want to move the country 
forward, we have to make these kinds of investments. And to the 
American people who are out there, President Bush promised to increase 
the Pell grants when he first ran. He did not do it. He promised to 
fund No Child Left Behind. He did not do it. This Congress made the 
same kind of commitments. They did not do it. Who has flip-flopped? Who 
has flip-flopped?
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Mr. Speaker, the point the gentleman made is little 
understood, and I have a whole bunch of

[[Page H7423]]

those guaranteed student loans to get through, and what you said just 
really merits revisiting.

                              {time}  2145

  The Federal Government is going to guarantee banks 9.5 percent rate 
of return for extending loans to students to go to college to get a 
higher education.
  Now, it is a great thing that we can help kids get a higher 
education. That is good. But the point is those loans are guaranteed by 
the Federal Government. The bank has no risk. Zero risk. I always 
thought interest had something to do with risk. So if the bank has no 
risk, how is it that they are going to get guaranteed?
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. Just to clarify, if a student defaults on a loan 
and takes out $10,000 worth of loans in Columbus, Ohio, or Youngstown 
State University, bolts town and moves to Oregon, who picks up the tab?
  The government. So the bank only benefits. If they pay the loan back 
they make the 9.5 half percent interest when they loan it out at 3.5 
and if the guy bolts town, the Government picks up the tab. Great deal.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. If we took instead and said, hey, let us go back to a 
program that we developed in the 1950s, National Direct Student Loans, 
National Defense Student Loans they were originally called, and said 
the Government is going to make the loans to its young people, guess 
what? The Government always knows where to find you.
  So the Government could do it without having the banks in the middle 
and for the difference in what the gentleman is talking about between 
9.5 percent and say if the government charged 3.5 or 4 percent, the 
current Treasury bond rate to the students, we can give one million 
more Pell grants or a couple of million more loans to students. But 
instead, we are going to give money to the banks, the poor suffering, 
long suffering banks. They need the help, the subsidies.
  On the other side of the aisle we hear about free market economies 
and socialism and all that stuff. What is this? Why is the Government 
subsidizing banks? The second point is made about No Child Left Behind. 
I have a State that we have got some real problems funding primary and 
secondary education. I have not seen the number as big as Ohio's, but 
our number in the tens of millions of dollars that No Child Left Behind 
is underfunded. It is an unfunded mandate.
  Again, early on when the Republicans said no more unfunded mandates, 
I was with them. I was sincere. I said I do not think we should send 
down these mandates to local governments, down to schools and other 
communities. The Federal Government wants to send down new rules, they 
should pay for them. The President's signature bill. No Child Left 
Behind, $15 billion underfund, $15 billion being extracted from the 
States and local school jurisdictions that cannot afford to pay for the 
President's signature bill, much of which is repetitive.
  National testing. We have State testing. We did not need national 
testing. I voted against the Clinton mandate for national testing. I 
thought my Republican colleagues were sincere when they joined me in 
that. Bush becomes President, proposes an identical national testing 
mandate to President Clinton's, guess what a majority of the 
Republicans voted for? I voted against it. I voted against a Democrat 
and a Republican President. It was a stupid idea. It is very expensive. 
They are teaching to the test. It is a new mandate, and we are not 
paying for it; Washington, D.C. is not paying for it.
  These are the kinds of policies, the hypocrisy that we are getting 
out of that side of the aisle is unbelievable. The American people need 
to start paying a little bit of attention to what these people are 
really doing to them.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. The beautiful thing, I do not know if it is 
beautiful or not, but the craziness that we have operating now in the 
United States Congress. We have a thousand kids dead in Iraq. We have 
thousands upon thousands of kids that we have probably all visited up 
at Walter Reed that are injured. We have 1.5 million kids moving into 
poverty. We have 5 million more people that are uninsured. We have 
subsidies for housing getting cut, so poor people cannot afford their 
rent any more. We have Medicaid going up. We have no cost controls for 
the prescription drugs. We have a million kids that will not, or 
250,000 college eligible kids that will not, go to college because they 
cannot afford it. We have the Pell grant that is 40 percent of what it 
was when it started in the 1970s; and tomorrow we are voting on the 
Pledge Protection Act, to protect the pledge.
  Now, we know it is the end of the session. Whether you are for it or 
against it, we know it is not going anywhere. The Senate is not going 
to take it up. It is divisive. It is a reason not to vote on anything 
of major policy substance in this Congress.
  The Democrats have a plan that is going to move the country forward. 
My colleagues are out campaigning too. People are tired of the 
politics. The divisive issues that we bring forth today, we do not want 
to talk about student loans, because then we cannot raise money from 
the banks. We do not want to talk about Medicare costs because then we 
cannot raise money from the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical 
companies. So what do we talk about? The Pledge of Allegiance.
  What is going on? If you are sitting at home and you lost your job 
and you cannot send your kid to school and tuition is going up and 
there is a local property tax on for your local school district, there 
is a mental health tax on, there is a tax on for your police and fire 
because we have cut the COPS program and the Congress is talking about 
the Pledge Protection Act?
  How disconnected are we?
  Mr. PALLONE. I agree with you. It really leads into our next point.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Let me just on that, I support the pledge as it is. I 
learned it that way. I think it is fine. The courts have in fact ruled 
many times that the use of God on our currency or our coinage or, in 
this case, under God in the pledge is diminimus. It is not a violation, 
and there is in fact no current threat.
  The one case that was pending against those words in the pledge was 
thrown out by the courts. There is no threat from the so-called 
activist judiciary at this point in time because the one that had been 
filed was thrown out. But instead of addressing real issues for which 
they have no answer, here is something where there is a non-existent 
threat, but there is a real threat to the kids who cannot go to 
college. There is a real threat to the seniors that are cutting their 
pills in half because they cannot afford them. There is a real threat 
to the woman I talked about who will be thrown out of her subsidized 
housing in Albany having worked her whole life because she cannot 
afford it any more.
  There are incredible threats to our troops in Iraq because of a 
reckless foreign policy, but they have no answer for those things. So 
they want to distract people with things that most of us agree on. We 
like the Pledge the way it is. There are a lot of things we love about 
our country, but they want to divide us on those issues and not deal 
with the real problems.
  Mr. PALLONE. Both of the gentlemen commented on communities and the 
concerns that communities have, and that is clearly the next point that 
we have here, so we can just go right into it.
  The fifth point of the Democrats' new Partnership for America's 
Future is community; essentially working together for safe communities, 
free of crime and drugs, supporting local businesses and groups, to 
keep our families safe and our neighborhoods strong, and enforcing our 
anti-pollution laws to keep our air and water clean and healthy with 
polluters paying for the damage that they cause.

  Republicans have tried to cut back on support for local police 
officers, supporting proposals that would slash funding for the COPS 
program which has put thousands of cops on the street nationwide. As 
you know, that was a major initiative that President Clinton had, and 
that put a lot of police on the street in communities throughout the 
nation 4 or 5 years ago or even longer.
  But in addition to that, the Republicans have even drained the 
Superfund program. One of the points that was made today when we had 
the press conference unveiling the new partnership was that we have 
about 719 sites that are under the Superfund program, hazardous waste 
sites that currently have the potential to endanger the families or the 
health of the families that live

[[Page H7424]]

nearby. But what the Republicans have done is about 10 years ago when 
they first came into the majority under Speaker Gingrich, they have 
decided not to renew the tax on oil and chemical companies that pay for 
the Superfund. So there is no money left in the Superfund any more to 
clean up these hazardous waste sites.
  Democrats would protect the safety of our communities with strong law 
enforcement and community policing. We would also invest in better 
transportation choices to fight congestion, create jobs, and improve 
the quality of life. And we would also restore the Superfund tax 
legislation that would force polluters to clean up their own mess 
rather than the American taxpayers.
  Right now what happens is if a Superfund site needs to be cleaned up, 
we have to use what we call general revenue funds which are moneys that 
come from income taxes primarily, so the taxpayers are paying for the 
clean up. Whereas it used to be before the Republicans came into the 
majority, the oil and chemical companies would pay that tax into the 
Superfund and that money would be used to clean up the sites.
  In addition to that, there has been every effort on the part of Bush 
and the Republicans to not enforce the Clean Water Act, the Safe 
Drinking Water Act, and the Clean Air Act. We could go on and on about 
their efforts to basically water down that legislation or those 
provisions that relate to water and air.
  I do not know if the gentleman wanted to comment on any of those. I 
could say myself that the woman that was at our press conference today 
from Marlboro, New Jersey, that talked about the Superfund program is 
actually in my district and that was a perfect example. She did not go 
into the details, but the two Superfund sites she mentioned, one of 
them is Imperial Oil. What happens now is, because we do not have money 
in this trust fund from the tax and oil and chemical industries, at the 
end of the fiscal year which is August, September, right about now, 
these various States get some kind of notice from the Federal 
Government saying, we do not have any more money to clean up your site. 
We are short of money this year.
  That is what happened to the Imperial Oil site. They got a notice 
saying they were not going to have enough money, and so we had to go 
back and try to get the funding and try to scrape around and see if 
there was money available. That never happened before when the 
Superfund existed because the money was there, paid for by the very 
companies that were creating the pollution.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. I think it is a fair principle to say that the companies 
that are responsible for the pollution, the companies that made a 
profit when they created those hazardous waste and those Superfund 
sites should bear a substantial portion of the burden for cleaning them 
up. There is a new sort of vision on the other side of the aisle here, 
the Republicans saying, well, if you want to clean it up, clean it up 
yourself.
  Hey, somebody made money creating that mess. That is what this is all 
about. They made money. So tough luck. The same thing has happened in 
my State. We have a major Superfund problem. We have been told, well, 
sorry, there is no more money to deal with those sites. Maybe you 
people would like to clean up. We have got to live with it, and someone 
else created it.
  I have not noticed exactly that the oil and gas industries are 
hurting. Somehow I think I saw the last quarter when they were gouging 
the heck out of the American consumers with $2 and $2.20 a gallon of 
gas that they made record profits. So if they made record profits, how 
is it that they cannot afford a minimal continuation of the Superfund 
tax which would lower their profits a tiny bit, but not very much.
  Mr. PALLONE. I have to tell my colleagues that we only have 4 minutes 
left so I want to get to our last point.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. We do not want to leave accountability because there is 
a heck of a lot of that missing around here.
  Mr. PALLONE. A lot of this relates to the deficit issue talked about 
before.
  Our last point is accountability: holding those in power accountable 
for their actions, acting responsibly for our children by restoring 
fiscal discipline and eliminating deficit spending with pay-as-you-go 
budgets and requiring real consequences for CEOs and corporations who 
break the law at the expense of those who play by the rules.
  Again, all the families nationwide have seen their share of the 
national debt, as my colleagues talked about earlier, increase by 
$52,000 and face a debt tax of $10,000 over the next 6 years. Unlike 
Republicans, Democrats will also refuse to cater to the Nation's 
special interest at the expense of the middle class, will require real 
consequences for CEOs and corporations that break the law.
  This is the last part of our new partnership with the American 
people, our promise to honor these six values and the policies that 
they represent.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. Let me ask a very simple question on that. Since every 
person that consumes electricity in my State is paying about 40 percent 
more today for the same electrons from the same plant because of the 
manipulation of the markets by Ken Lay and the fact that the Bush 
administration with Pat Wood and the Federal Energy Regulatory 
Commission would not do anything about it, does that mean that Ken Lay 
would finally go to jail?
  Mr. PALLONE. I think so.
  Mr. DeFAZIO. I support accountability if that is what we will get out 
of it.
  Mr. RYAN of Ohio. I think when you talk about accountability and the 
future of our kids, one of the issues I want to touch on briefly is the 
issue of security which ties into what the gentleman was talking about 
before with really all of these issues, accountability, community, 
national security.

                              {time}  2200

  Two cops in a town that I represent, the city of Warren, Ohio, will 
be eliminated because of the cuts that this administration and this 
Congress have passed through the COPS program and through HUD, two cops 
in a town of 48,000 people that has four cops on patrol at midnight on 
a Saturday night.
  Who is making us more safe? Certainly not the policies of this 
administration, checking one container out of every 50 that comes into 
the ports of the United States, which I do not have to explain to the 
gentleman here or the gentleman here or me, Ohio, even. What are we 
doing?
  I mean, Senator Kerry may not have phrased it properly that we want 
to fight a different war or a more sensitive war, but we are not 
fighting World War II anymore. This is an intelligence war where you 
can make a bomb that fits into a briefcase that can blow up millions of 
people.
  So the American people have to look very closely at the kind of 
policies that are coming out of this Congress right now, and we are not 
offering a very bright future, I do not think. And I am not a 
pessimistic person; I am probably more optimistic in most instances 
than I probably should be. But we are not doing things right now, and 
there is a critical, critical, critical election coming up here that 
defines that the two parties are clearly in different positions: tax 
cuts, spending $600 billion more than you are taking in, jeopardizing 
the future of the country; outsourcing jobs; and trying to say that 
this war in Iraq, which is the central front of the war on terrorism 
that we are losing is somehow making us safer; or the Democrats that 
are saying, let us take care of the United States of America, fund the 
education programs, fund cops, firefighters, port security, national 
security, homeland security, get these troops back home as soon as 
possible and make sure that we are investing in education and health 
care so our kids and grandkids can have a bright future to create this 
new economy that we do not know what it is going to be yet, but we know 
if we educate them everything will be okay.
  That is our plan, and I want to thank the gentlewoman from California 
(Ms. Pelosi) and the gentleman from Maryland (Mr. Hoyer) and the 
gentleman from New Jersey (Mr. Menendez) and the gentleman from New 
Jersey (Mr. Pallone) and the leadership of our caucus for providing us 
a message to go to the American people where they can say that 
Democrats get it, the Democrats have a plan.
  We saw real people today in the United States Capitol that have real

[[Page H7425]]

issues, that need our help, and the government is here to help. Maybe 
sometimes we do not do everything right, but we are here to help, and I 
hope that we can fulfill what the gentlewoman from California (Ms. 
Pelosi) wrote in here, that our actions are worthy of the aspirations 
of our children.
  Mr. PALLONE. Mr. Speaker, I appreciate the gentleman's comments, and 
I think the thing that you said that I really want to stress the most, 
because we are almost done here, is the fact that this is an optimistic 
vision, that we are full of hope, and we have a basic vision that says 
that we will work with the American people as partners to make their 
lives and our government better.
  We are optimistic about what can be done, but we also feel that it 
can only be done if we change the majority and if the Democrats have 
the opportunity to implement this partnership with America after 
November 2.
  So I thank both gentlemen.

                          ____________________